Don’t Let Your Niceness Be Your Weakness

It’s easy to want to be nice. Someone asks for something, and you say yes. They ask for something else, and you say yes again. Much easier than saying no.

If you say no, they might get angry, hurt, or disappointed. They might not like you. And all of that is uncomfortable.

But there are people who know you are nice and will keep asking you for favors, even though they know they’re making you uncomfortable or it’s inconvenient for you.

And if you keep saying yes, they are now taking advantage of you, and you have turned your niceness from a virtue into a weakness. A very easily manipulated weakness.

It’s fine to be an optimist, believing that all people at their core are good and don’t mean any harm towards you. But it is not okay to fail to draw healthy boundaries for yourself.

You can say no. You can say something makes you uncomfortable. You can politely decline and then stop answering their badgering phone calls.

Once you realize someone is taking advantage of your niceness, don’t let yourself continue to be taken advantage of and easily manipulated. Because if you do, you become an accomplice to it by not stopping them when you had the opportunity.

And then the reality becomes that you’re not actually a nice person, but just someone who is afraid to stand up for herself.